Neil Young - Homegrown (June 19, 2020, at long last)

I guess another way to look at it is the Ragged Glory version is the beginning of the coke party and the Homegrown version is the end.

im a little bit underwhelmed by the album. this period of Neil is one of my favorite of any artist at any time - tonight's the night and on the beach are by far my favourite Neil Young albums. I don't think this is anywhere near either of them. I'm not dismissing this as a curio but it's somewhere between that and a "real" album in my mind

I'll also raise my hand as underwhelmed. I blame Neil's terrible handling of his catalogue.

It's still early days, but Homegrown may not be as good as OTB or TTN but it's not embarrassed to be in the same room with them. I'd say it's as good as TFA at least, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I think Homegrown is the worst Ditch album. Of course the worst Ditch album is still a B+/A-

my sense is that over time songs like Homegrown and White Lines will come to be more closely identified w/ this record and it will sound more coherent and singular in the catalog

like I'm digging it all the way through but knowing those other versions gives it a little bit of a "compilation" feel and I think that will burn off

As much as his Seventies catalog goes,it's more or less in the same quality as Comes A Time imo: not his best but not his worst (American StRs and Bars) too

I'm going to live with Homegrown for the next 25 years and get back to you guys.

Homegrown is a good thing, as far as i was told

xpost otm

I don't like the sound quality of the Spotify version, it's very understated, Kansas almost sinks into a big nothing. This White Lines version i fucks with, but Mexico is too short!

Vinyl sounds pretty good to me.

Yeah I still have to get a decent record player for the living room. Don't want no big ass speakers though. What I need is a record player i can hook up to the sonos.

Arrived a few days ago, played it twice in the car today (which points to my general wariness).

Overall, I like it fine. The only thing I'd 100% scrap would be "We Don't Smoke It No More," which to me is generic and a pretty weak joke. "Florida," I don't know. I guess it works okay in context. If this were Zuma or After the Gold Rush, its presence would be a problem for me.

The first three songs are good. Not outstanding, but they work together well on an album. I can't remember how I felt about "Love Is a Rose" 40 years ago, but I like it a lot here. "Homegrown" I was always indifferent to. I'm not sure if these are the original versions or not--if they aren't, I can't tell the difference (or I've forgotten).

"Kansas" and "White Line" I quite like, and after initially thinking I wasn't going to like "Vacancy"--Neil lumbers every which way--I do. Matches my mood these days, anyway.

I've always thought "Little Wing" was great--absent any context, for me the one indisputably great song here. (I should check back to see if I voted for it in the Neil Young poll 10 years ago--if I didn't, I should have.) My only quibble is it belongs to another album.

"Star of Bethlehem" is like "Love Is a Rose"--sounded good today, better I'm guessing than it used to.

Probably my biggest reservation is that it took so long to put out a record with only eight unreleased songs--or seven, depending how you feel about "Florida." It feels a little anti-climactic.

What was I hoping for? I wanted it to make 45 years vanish and turn me back into a 15-year-old, about to buy American Stars 'n Bars (the first Neil album I bought when it came out). That's not too much to ask for, obviously. In a weird way, the thing I find most moving about the album--most in the moment--is "For Carrie." I assume that was the original dedication, and I'm glad he kept it.

This take of "Homegrown" is the original recording. The ASnB version is from a Crazy Horse session later in '75 or '76.

This album has totally rekindled my fandom. I love it. I've purchased Tuscaloosa, OTB, and Roxy on vinyl in the last week.

Ditch Quadrilogy, baby. Nothing else quite gets to that spastic weirdness.

I'm with clemenza, almost down to the assessment of the specific highs and lows. Largely underwhelmed by the album, though I'm glad it exists and I'm glad I bought it.

when i listen i reflexively skip past florida and we don't smoke it no more. it cuts the album down to less than 30 minutes, but it flows so nicely.

I love the 1-2 punch of Florida and Kansas.

clemeza and Paul Ponzi please report to the doghouse..dog...house

ftr i do like florida, i just think it would sound better as a weird dispatch in the middle of something like le noise. the content of his dream/story definitely fits in with homegrown, but musically it's a patch of discordance in an otherwise cozy album.

Still loving this album though the other day I popped “Live Rust” on and remembered how much more I prefer the near-visceral thrills of Young with Crazy Horse over solo NY. Though I will go down fighting defending pretty much any and all NY forever. Still have to relisten to ”Trans”, though. It’s been a minute.

ftr i do like florida, i just think it would sound better as a weird dispatch in the middle of something like le noise. the content of his dream/story definitely fits in with homegrown, but musically it's a patch of discordance in an otherwise cozy album.

I'm a huge fan of songs that are happy landing spots after noisy, rough, or stressful songs, like "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)" after ". . . And the Gods Made Love". Kansas is like a warm hug after the nightmarish Florida.

The one album I think "Florida" would make the most sense on would be Journey Through the Past.

T/S: Homegrown Side A or Homegrown Side B?

Separate Ways
Try
Love is a Rose
Homegrown
Florida
Kansas
-
We Don't Smoke It No More
White Line
Vacancy
Little Wing
Star of Bethlehem

very tough, at least for me!

Fuck, I forgot Mexico on Side A!

that might tip the balance toward Side A for me

I was thinking about this over the weekend. I think "We Don't Smoke It No More" is my least favorite song so that might make me lean toward Side A, but this is very hard.

also my least fave. in general i'm not a big fan of the singalongs designed to make the people in a mid-70s arena crowd yell "woo", although neil's versions of those kind of songs are my favorite

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oCF4TSXS4us/XwiF_2A31BI/AAAAAAAAZ68/oyq8slHcX9Qj9x5O3KTiGd8nogdgkp_fQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/nya-florida-letter.jpg

!

Maybe you're supposed to listen to this while watching The Wizard of Oz.

Side A of this smokes Side B, especially given that 1) the first two songs are excellent, 2) side B has more songs we've all heard before (3 as opposed to just two on Side A) and 3) side B has We Don't Smoke It No More

Vacancy is probably the only reason I will ever play side B of this ever again

Somebody definitely needs to stop smoking it.

I'm more likely to go to Side B of Homegrown than I am to go to AS&B or H&D for those same songs.

what is this weird obsession that good songs that have already been released now cease to be enjoyable?

it's like this weird "product" mentality

plus the version of "Homegrown" here smokes the other one

;)

I like all the different versions of the older songs (though I'm pretty sure Star of Bethlehem is the exact same version as the one on Decade), but they also serve to make this feel less like some big event to me somehow

Side or Side B? New songs or old songs? It's all because of that love for Homegrown, babe. That makes the world go 'round and makes the thread go separate ways.

should have said "Side A or Side B?" Better file this post away in the archive for a few decades.

what is this weird obsession that good songs that have already been released now cease to be enjoyable?

Not sure if that means me or not. Not really what I meant...I still love "Little Wing"; I can't pretend not to notice, though, that I associate it with another album. If Bob Dylan had stuck the Highway 61 version of "Like a Rolling Stone" on his new album (to use an extreme example), it wouldn't stop being what it is, and I'd still love it. But it wouldn't be ideal, either.

but they also serve to make this feel less like some big event to me somehow

I'll second that, too. This album has been hyped and hyped for years. 25% of it--the three songs in their original versions (I won't count "Homegrown"), I already have.

Anyway, I said I like the album, and I'm glad I bought it. What I don't understand--I went through this with the last Tarantino film--is that sometimes, with very large and revered names, that's not accepted as enough; it has to be a masterpiece beyond reproach.

honest q: are people saying that? i'm not sure i've read any piece on it other than tyler's. personally i wouldn't call it a masterpiece...(though i would be comfortable calling OTB and TTN and ATGR masterpieces and pretty comfortable calling EKTIN and Rust Never Sleeps masterpieces)...but i think it's just really great

i guess don't worry about it being a "big event" and just enjoy it for what it is — a (mostly new) Neil Young record from the mid-70s. No one is saying it's beyond reproach. maybe live with it a little while? I felt a little bit underwhelmed when I heard it back in March, but it might be what they used to call a "grower."

even if you somehow discount the tracks that surfaced elsewhere, 8 "new" peak-era songs from one of our greatest living artists isn't an event?

An event that feels a little anticlimactic, at least to me. (And, to be fair, the almost constant flow of new and rumored and abandoned Neil projects probably contributes to that.)

even if you somehow discount the tracks that surfaced elsewhere, 8 "new" peak-era songs from one of our greatest living artists isn't an event?

not to be a pedant but I count seven new songs and one of them is a spoken word piece. And part of my being underwhelmed could also be blamed on archival / reissue / remaster fatigue in general. It isn't exactly novel these days to see "unearthed" studio recordings from artists of this era. I mean, there are box sets of the stuff...

We are home, groaning itt

that ol' light whine is a friend of mine